Celebrity transformation videos have become a popular trend on Chinese social media. Photo: IC

Ding Lan is sitting in front of her smartphone camera, gently brushing makeup over the left half of her face and quickly applying shades and highlights under her nose, her left eyebrow and left cheekbone.

Every move she makes seems soft and delicate, but also confident and determined.

And meanwhile, she speaks with her audience from time to time to introduce the techniques she is using and the features of her makeover.

Half an hour later, it is time to reveal the results of her work. She covers up the left side of her face. The right side shows the face of an ordinary Asian woman who is probably unskilled in applying makeup. And then she covers the right side of her face with one hand, revealing the look of a Caucasian beauty, and holds up her smartphone, which shows a photo of Ivanka Trump, the daughter of the US President Donald Trump.

The resemblance is so great that the audience types comments on the live-streaming interface saying, "Oh, you look just like her." "That's unbelievable," and "Now you can go undercover and trick the US President!"

"I think Ivanka Trump is a powerful, beautiful woman," Ding said. "The key to this is to observe her carefully and look for the distinctive features in her face and makeup."

During a live-streaming video on February 21, Ding, a video blogger from Hebei Province's Shijiazhuang, in her 30s, managed to transform into Ivanka Trump, one of the dozens of celebrities that she has successfully imitated with her outstanding makeup skills.

The transformation subculture has recently become prevalent on multiple social media platforms in the country. Makeup artists and video bloggers gain great popularity through live streaming or releasing short videos of themselves working the magic of a makeup brush to become celebrities from both in and outside of China.

Makeup artists Ding Lan as Ivanka Trump, Wang Jiawen as Anne Hathaway and Hu Yichen. Photos: Courtesy of Ding Lan, Wang Jiawen and Hu Yichen

One person with 1,000 faces

Dubbed the "Queen with 1,000 faces" by her more than 1.5 million followers on Weibo and Douyin, a short video-sharing app, Ding does not put on makeup to attract men or look good at work; she does it to transform herself into celebrities.

Ding is in the cosmetic products sales business and creating transformation videos has been extremely helpful for her career. But doing celebrity transformations is not easy work. Ding remembers once she undertook a really difficult transformation in the evening that took her hours, and she did not get to bed until 5 am.

According to Ding, certain facial features are seen as advantages and more transformable, such as monolid eyes, eyes that do not have a crease on the eyelid.

In some Asian countries such as China, South Korea and Japan, many people consider having double eyelids to be more attractive and using plastic surgery or cosmetic methods to create double eyelids is popular.

"But with monolids, you can adjust eyelid tape to shape the eyes according to the celebrity's eyelids. It would be more difficult if the makeup artist has double eyelids," Ding said.

Hu Yichen, 27, who lives in Shanghai, a male blogger in the community, thinks a face without distinctive features can be advantageous in the growing competitive makeup blogger community.

"I think the plainer one's face is, the more he or she is suitable for doing transformation makeup, leaving more room for the makeup artist to apply his or her skills," Hu said.

Hu has done makeup transformation videos of more than 20 celebrities, with the most popular one being seen by more than 3 million people. Because of the popularity of his videos, Hu started his own cosmetics brand HYC. Most of his followers are women between 18 and 30 from first- and second-tier cities.

According to Hu, having an educational background in art or fashion design will also be an advantage for the makeup artists if they want to look exactly like the celebrities they imitate and stand out in the community.

The key to transforming into Western celebrities lies in the eye makeup. Photo: IC

Becoming Beyoncé and Rhianna

When Chinese bloggers like Ding use makeup to transform into Western celebrities, one of the challenges is the distance between the eyebrows and eyes.

"The margin is much smaller in many Western faces than mine, so it's quite difficult," Ding said. 

However, Wang Jiawen, 24, from Sichuan Province, thinks it is easier and more fun to do foreign celebrities.

She has done transformation makeup of more than 10 Western stars in the past month, including Beyoncé, Rhianna, Katy Perry and Taylor Swift.

The one project that Wang is especially proud of is of her beloved character Max Black, played by Kat Dennings in the American sitcom 2 Broke Girls that premiered in 2011. "Many viewers say it's one of my best works and that even my temperament resembles her."

There are advantages for Asian bloggers to recreate Westerners, she said.

For instance, Westerners tend to have taller noses and deeper eye sockets; an Asian makeup artist will be able to apply color and shading to achieve the resemblance on their own faces.

Both Wang and Ding think the eyes are the key, and if the shape of the celebrity's face is different from theirs, they will use shading or work their hair curves to solve it.

"Celebrity transformation is a skill that requires a lot of research and practice to know how one person's face is different from another's," Wang said. 

A worldwide trend

Wang is a big fan of Pony's, a South Korean makeup artist with millions of followers who is well-known for her celebrity transformation makeup. In many other countries, including Japan, the US and Italy, there are also such makeup artists active on many social media platforms.

Their viewers, according to the celebrity transformation bloggers interviewed by Metropolitan, are mostly in their 20s and 30s from all over the country, with female viewers being the majority. Some are just in it for the fun of the moment when the transformation is complete and some consider it a more interesting way to learn new makeup tricks.

However, the reason behind the popularity of this subculture is that people like to see the possibility for ordinary people to look exactly like superstars without having plastic surgery, Ding said.

"I think the trend will continue to grow," Wang said. "People like to see that an ordinary girl can transform herself into the stars they love. They like it more so when we do foreign stars because it's even more refreshing."

As celebrity transformation videos get more popular, Wang finds her followers are getting more demanding. "They also want me to make the same facial expressions and make eye contact like their idols do. It's challenging for me but I'll do my best."